A typical wireless communication device, such as a mobile phone, comprises, among other things, a processor coupled to a memory and to a transceiver, each enclosed in a housing. A mobile power source, such as a battery, is coupled to and supplies power to the processor, the memory and the transceiver. A speaker and a microphone are also enclosed within the housing for transmitting and receiving, respectively, acoustic signals to and from a user of the wireless communication device. The wireless communication device communicates information by transmitting and receiving electromagnetic (“EM”) energy in the radio frequency (“RF”) band via an antenna coupled to the transceiver.
More recently, mobile communication devices have been developed that communicate over a plurality of air interface technologies. For example, a mobile handset may be designed to incorporate both cellular telephony technology and wireless local area network (“WLAN”) technology. Such devices can be referred to as multi-mode handset devices, because of the multiple air interface modes in which the device may be configured.
A significant challenge facing the design and development of multi-mode handsets is the ability to efficiently and optimally configure the device to an appropriate air interface. For example, if the handset were configured such that cellular networks have priority over WLAN, it would be very difficult for multi-mode handset to access WLAN. The main reason for this difficulty is the fact that WLAN coverage is small and spotty compared to cellular network coverage, and further because WLAN Access Points (“APs”) are typically embedded within cellular network coverage.
Accordingly, there is a strong need in the art for an efficient and optimized method for providing system selection for multi-mode wireless communication devices.